


Existential Crisis

by persephone20



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, TVD episode: 'The Descent', story stubs that have never gone anywhere but need a home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jessica! I have a secret. I have a big one but I've never said it out loud! I can't be who other people want me to be. What she wants me to be." Damon's introspective during the last scene of 'The Descent'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Existential Crisis

**Author's Note:**

> On re-watching season 2, I realised that I didn't have an AO3 account last time I watched this episode, so I then trawled through my emails to find and post this short piece :D

Lying in the middle of a road. He doesn't plan it, it sort of just happens. As he lies there, he thinks of all the other times he's crossed this road, the time he took Elena out of the car and everything that has happened since. As he lies there, he tries not to think of any of it, but the sound of a car approaching brings all of it back.

For that, he's already got it in for the girl before she walks out of her car and tries to help him. Tries to help _him_. Like he can be saved, or like he can be made to believe someone else can really care about him. Because he knows that nobody really cares about him. Not the real him. Elena comes close sometimes, but even she sees the him she wants him to be. Closer, she says, so close to him being the him he's 'supposed to be'. Whatever that means.

And then she's darting away, because she's seen that him, the real him, not the 'supposed to be' him, and she's smart. She knows it danger. There are already tears in her eyes before she realises she can't move. Because he's compelled her body, but not her mind. Because if any of this is supposed to mean anything, she has to be aware to hear it.

Because all the words he is saying now are Damon words, and all the words would mean nothing if he didn't kill her, and she knows it. She knows it just like he knows he can't be good. But he's been pretending for so long it's starting to seem like a really close-fitting lie. And he misses it. His lip curls, and the girl tries and fails to shy away from him, but he's not snarling at her. _She_ doesn't even matter any more, not like Rose, Rose who had to say the words that drove a dagger through his heart. He wouldn't stake her after that, not when he should have.

 _I am not human. And I miss it._

She didn't deserve it, after bringing that pain onto him. Oh yes, it was all very easy for her to die, but what about him? What about the endless stretch of another couple of hundred years that awaited him? Years unnumbered and uncalled for. That's why he let her live, why he let her suffer the pain of the last day of her existence, why he let those kids be killed. Because he can't be good, and the further he pushes himself away from that, the less the loss of his humanity will confront him.


End file.
